The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual ManPatañjali
Religion
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual Man
Patañjali
Yoga -- Early works to 1800
We are continuing the study of the bodily powers and centres of force
in their relation to the powers and forces of the spiritual man. We
have already considered the dominant power of physical life, the
creative power which secures the continuance of physical life; and,
further, the manner in which, through aspiration and sacrifice, it is
gradually raised and set to the work of upbuilding the body of the
spiritual man. We come now to the dominant psychic force, the power
which manifests itself in speech, and in virtue of which the voice may
carry so much of the personal magnetism, endowing the orator with a
tongue of fire, magical in its power to arouse and rule the emotions of
his hearers. This emotional power, this distinctively psychical force,
is the cause of “hunger and thirst,” the psychical hunger and thirst
for sensations, which is the source of our two-sided life of
emotionalism, with its hopes and fears, its expectations and memories,
its desires and hates. The source of this psychical power, or, perhaps
we should say, its centre of activity in the physical body is said to
be in the cavity of the throat. Thus, in the Taittiriya Upanishad it is
written: “There is this shining ether in the inner being. Therein is
the spiritual man, formed through thought, immortal, golden. Inward, in
the palate, the organ that hangs down like a nipple,-this is the womb
of Indra. And there, where the dividing of the hair turns, extending
upward to the crown of the head.”
Indra is the name given to the creative power of which we have spoken,
and which, we are told, resides in “the organ which hangs down like a
nipple, inward, in the palate.”
31. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on the centre of force in the
channel called the “tortoise-formed,” comes steadfastness.
We are concerned now with the centre of nervous or psychical force
below the cavity of the throat, in the chest, in which is felt the
sensation of fear; the centre, the disturbance of which sets the heart
beating miserably with dread, or which produces that sense of terror
through which the heart is said to stand still.
When the truth concerning fear is thoroughly mastered, through
spiritual insight into the immortal, fearless life, then this force is
perfectly controlled; there is no more fear, just as, through the
control of the psychic power which works through the nerve-centre in
the throat, there comes a cessation of “hunger and thirst.” Thereafter,
these forces, or their spiritual prototypes, are turned to the building
of the spiritual man.
Always, it must be remembered, the victory is first a spiritual one;
only later does it bring control of the bodily powers.
32. Through perfectly concentrated Meditation on the light in the head
comes the vision of the Masters who have attained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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